When the great Bodhisattva
Samantabhadra, sat down & wept,
remembering what might have been,
the All Good one, so noble, once filled with light & hope, now dejectedly observed
the world-as-it-is below
& cried:
Gone…gone…all gone…all gone, all gone so terribly wrong.
There is no good, no peace, no justice, no love, no fairness…
No striving for good,
No striving for peace,
No striving for justice,
No striving for love,
No striving for fairness,
There is no compassion, no remorse, no tenderness, no mercy…
No striving for compassion,
No striving for remorse,
No striving for tenderness,
No striving for mercy,
No freedom from fear, no freedom from hunger, no freedom from want…
No striving to provide freedom from fear,
No striving to provide freedom from hunger,
…or freedom from want.
There is no “shining city upon a hill”,
no “workers paradise”,
no “invisible hand”,
no place to hide.
Alas! There are no magic solutions…
no mantras…no easy way out…
There are no “renewable” resources…is no “sustainable” development …
no end to war & destruction…
There is nothing left but this dying Earth & the
barren paths leading to dried-out dreams, for
no heart lifts another’s:
There is no heart in this world anymore.
This the wise now see, &
thus, lamenting over the state of our world, saddened Samantabhadra left, muttering only one thing for us to say, one thing to remember, for all of us, for all time:
Gone…gone…all gone…all gone, all gone so terribly wrong.